Repairs coming to roads along East State Street retail corridor

ROCKFORD — The city will repair a series of pothole-ridden roads along the East State Street retail corridor this summer to coincide with the state’s road repairs in that area.

On Monday, the Illinois Department of Transportation began a $2.3 million project to resurface three miles of East State from Mid-America Drive west to Fairview Avenue. It’s one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares with more than 33,000 vehicles per day on some stretches, according to IDOT traffic counts.

The city will mill and resurface 15 roads that connect drivers to businesses along the East State corridor in conjunction with the state’s project.

“We picked some of the worst ones and we may follow this up with another project next year to address more,” said Tyler Nelson, the city’s capital improvement program operations manager

City Council members voted June 2 to award the nearly $850,000 project to William Charles Construction. The work is paid for from the city’s 1 percent sales tax for infrastructure.

“Our infrastructure is financed through our sales tax referendum. That area generates a lot of sales tax,” Nelson said. “It sees a lot of visitors. It sees a lot of people that come into the community to shop there. We thought it was important to invest money into” the repairs.

The city expects work to begin in early July and be completed by Aug. 15, Nelson said. Like the state’s project to resurface East State, all the work will be done overnight — between 8 p.m. and 11 a.m. — “so it will minimize disruption to any of the businesses in the area,” Nelson said.